Baby Green Steps
Like nearly everyone I know, I’m trying to be more green at my house. But like a toddler taking his first wobbly steps, my results are usually far from perfect and further from pretty.
Bags of outgrown clothes, toys, kitchenware and books are now usually piled in the basement or by the front door, waiting for me to Freecycle or truck them to Goodwill. Piles of cloth napkins and towels, our green replacements for paper napkins and paper towels, sit by the stairs, waiting to be carried to the laundry room.
As I clean up a milk spill on the kitchen counter with a cloth towel, a towel that will hang around and get a little grotty until it is washed, I try to channel the mindset of the pioneer moms. They were out of the prairie using no electricity, burning few fossil fuels, rewashing, reusing, making do – but I blame Garth Williams for making it look easy and neat. Remember the beautiful charcoal drawings that illustrator Garth Williams created for the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House series? Not a straw out of place.
That’s not what our greener house looks like.
In Williams’s illustrations (and countless laundry commercials), the laundry line is usually full of nothing but clean white sheets billowing in the wind. No mildewy beach towels, or faded bathing suits. No shabby toddler undies with stains in the crotch.
And where was the Ingalls’s garbage pile?
This summer I stopped throwing fruit and vegetable scraps into the garbage and started saving them to put in our compost heap. Now I’ve got a refuse pile in the backyard (that Dear Husband calls “the raccoon buffet”) and a bowl of scraps sitting on the kitchen counter. (I do usually cover the bowl with a plate. Trying to be presentable here!)
At first I considered buying a compost container, but it just seemed like overkill – why do I need to buy more stuff when I’m trying to get rid of stuff? So after over-thinking the whole process way too much, I just started chucking the vegetable and fruit kitchen scraps in our back yard. The pile ain’t beautiful, but it’s behind a bush so no one but the bunnies and the squirrels see it. Doesn’t smell. Whenever I spy any bugs flying around, I just toss some dirt on top and they go away.
I dumped an entire bag of flour out here once, partly because it was old and stale, but mostly to see what would happen. Like every other bit of organic matter dropped in the pile, (except for the persistent corncobs who will apparently outlive me) the flour seemed to disappear in a few days, taking on the color of the earth, disintegrating into the never-growing pile.
I’ve got to admit I’m growing to love composting. My friend Serena says banana peels are so full of nutrients for the roses that throwing them on the compost pile is a waste. She said rose enthusiasts bury them right next to their rose roots, so I’ve been trying that too. My Uncle Jon’s compost heap has a six-foot high frame. This summer an enormous vine grew out of last year’s decorative fall gourds, climbing the frame and taking over an entire corner of his garden. How cool is that?
So now, once or twice a day, I carry out the back door a plate of cantaloupe rinds and bruised tomato slices, corn husks and potato peels, calling back to my daughters, “I’m going to feed the rabbits!” I walk barefoot through the grass to the bushes bordering the back of the yard and throw the scraps between a patch of straggly mint and an overgrown evergreen. I carefully peel each remaining last sticky scrap from the bowl.
As I do this, I think of an old story retold in No Impact Man, a book (from the blog!) about one urban family’s efforts to reduce their footprint to less than zero. The author Colin Beavan remembers a story where a monk is carrying water in a big hurry, sloshing it over the sides of the bucket in his haste and carelessness. His Zen master asks him, “Why are you killing that water?” It’s a great question. Why not take the time to be a little more careful in everything we do? The compost heap gives me an opportunity to be a little Zen, a little more thoughtful and deliberate, which opens up a space to be grateful in the execution of the smallest and most mundane of tasks.
Now that I’m composting, it amazes me how much organic waste can come from making one dinner. Now instead of mindlessly dumping the watermelon rinds and coffee grounds in the trash for someone else to deal with, I’m thinking about my responsibility to these bits and pieces. My humble compost heap is giving back to the earth that which came from the earth. Lightening the load of our overstuffed garbage trucks and landfills. Giving me a moment to enjoy the short walk through the soft grass and take a peek up at the sky and the clouds.
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Category: Environment
I agree with Serena about the banana peels. I also bury them right near the roses.
Composting is the best thing that ever happened to our garden. We do have a composter and use it daily. We also shred leaves in the fall to use as mulch. A few years ago our friends thought we were being cheap with the composting and the shredded leaf mulch. Now they call for advice.
We started composting this year as well! We decided to get a composter to help do the job, since we don’t have a good corner that toddler fingers wouldn’t start digging around in. It’s amazing how much our weekly garbage amount has gone down.
After some trial and error, we’re using an old coffee can for collecting our scraps. They seal tightly and work perfectly for trips out to the composter.